Delhi-Noida tollway drains motorists' wallets, fuel and patience

It is half past seven in the evening, and as the summer sun sets over the Yamuna, vehicles have already started forming serpentine queues at the Noida Toll Bridge. A majority of them are office goers- journalists from the nearby Film City, IT professionals from the numerous tech firms in Noida & other middle class commuters- waiting to get back home after a hard day's work. Each of these vehicles spends 5 to 10 minutes in clearing the 31 toll booths that line the bridge.

Even if vehicles wait for 5 minutes on average across toll plazas in India, fuel worth Rs10 billion is wasted every year, says a CRISIL study referred to in its bulletin dated March 2013. By this logic, lakhs of rupees worth of fuel must be getting wasted at the Noida Toll Bridge each year, with more than 16,000 vehicles idling during any peak hour.

The concession agreement signed between NTBCL, its parent company IL&FS and the UP government permits the private operator to keep commuters waiting for up to 10 minutes. There is no clause that penalises the operator for extending the waiting time of the toll bridge users.

Some commuters say that a long queue at the toll plaza actually benefits the private operator. The toll plaza has been turned into one big hoarding with several advertisements dotting its walls. "People wait for at least 10 minutes during peak hour to pay toll. I work for a news channel. Our ad rates peak during prime time. By the same measure the ads closest to the plaza, where people spend time waiting for many minutes, must be earning astronomical revenues for the toll operator. It does not matter to him whether I waste Rs100 or Rs1,000 in fuel while waiting to pay his toll. In any case the operator will keep earning at my expense- either by grabbing my eyeballs or my wallet," says Ruchika Singh, a mediaperson.

Even after crossing the bridge, traffic does not ease owing to a bottleneck created by the absence of alternate routes. dna reported earlier that the Delhi and UP governments have assured the private operator that they would never construct another bridge that would end its monopoly.

"This money-minded approach to building urban transport infrastructure is bound to fail. People in India pay road tax, fuel surcharge and a host of other charges. It is complete nonsense to make them pay toll as well," says Rohit Baluja, president of Institute of Road Traffic Management.

"What option do I have? It is the same story every day when we leave home from work. I lose half a litre of fuel waiting to pay the toll. Even after paying toll to cross over smoothly, I get stuck on the bridge and lose another litre. This is extortion. This harassment must stop," says Prakash Mehta, an IT professional going home to South Delhi's Defence Colony.

Mehta waits almost 7 minutes to pay the toll, but has barely driven a kilometre before a logjam unfolds in front of him. Cars, buses and trucks are stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic, barely moving a few metres every few seconds. Even motorcyclists, who usually manage to scoot through traffic, are trapped. The jam on the 13 kilometer-long flyway begins halfway over the river. It should have taken barely 5 minutes to reach the other end of the bridge. The actual commute takes an hour.

The Noida Toll Bridge Company Ltd (NTBCL) has maintained that it would not end toll collection until the time it gets its pound of flesh from commuters on the Delhi-Noida-Delhi Flyway (DND Flyway). Even though NTBCL has increased the recoverable project cost by close to 400% over a decade, there seems to be no consideration for the woes faced by commuters who use the toll bridge.